Enrique Krauze is Livid

Peña Nieto should have demanded a public apology for Trump’s insults against Mexico and Mexicans, for his repeatedly characterizing us as rapists and criminals. Not only did the elected president of Mexico fail to do so, but he referred to Trump’s ignorant allegations as “misunderstandings” due to differences of “perception.”

Peña Nieto should have publicly expressed his absolute refusal to pay for Trump’s absurd wall. In a tweet after the fact—fortunately picked up by the American press—Peña Nieto stated that he had, at the beginning of Trump’s visit, told him in private that Mexico would never pay for a wall. (A revelation of yet another one of Trump’s endless lies, since he claimed in their joint appearance afterward that there had been no discussion at all of how his pet wall would be financed.) But why did the Mexican president not bravely affirm his position in public?

...Trump came to Mexico to offer some supposedly laudatory words about we Mexicans whom he has spent his whole campaign insulting. Now we were “tremendous people.” And in exchange for these miserable crumbs of vacuous content, he was given a presidential treatment, incidentally alienating Hillary Clinton, a candidate who does understand and respect Mexico, who in her phrase wants to build bridges not walls (and whose husband literally saved Mexico from bankruptcy in 1995).

Donald Trump is a sociopath drunk on himself. His religion is hatred. His god is Donald Trump. He is also addicted to empty adjectives. He is not a man of his word or of words as markers of truth. If he wins the presidency (which seems improbable), the Mexican government will have to weigh the dimensions of this historic error, widely denounced in Mexico all across the political spectrum. From Trump, Mexico received only words, words worth no more than the paper they were scribbled on. In exchange, Mexico, filling the sad role of the useful idiot, gave a bigot the pat on the back that he required.